The proposed research deals with the situational and personal determinants of anticipatory stress and coping reactions. The coping strategies of immediate interest are vigilance and nonvigilance, behaviors closely associated with the state of anxiety. Vigilance is here operationally defined as choosing to listen for a warning signal prior to an aversive event, while nonvigilance is defined as choosing to ignore the warning signal. A subject's choice of coping stragegy, and the accompanying psychophysiological stress reactions will be investigated as a function of the nature of the anticipated event (e.g., electric shock, monitary loss) and, more Importantly, the manner and degree of control which the subject can exert over the event. In later stages of the research, the range of coping strategies investigated will be broadened to include aggression, the emphasis also being palced on the role of subject-control in determining the nature of the response. On a more theoretical level, this research represents an approach to the study of emotion which emphasizes underlying cognitions. In brief, emotions are viewed as forms of coping mediated by cognitive appraisals. One of the more important determinants of these appraisals is the response options (e.g., degree control, possibility for retaliation, etc.) open to the individual. This is true not simply with regard to the expression of motion, but also with regard to the actual perception of a situation as, say, anxiety- or anger-inducing.